ACCA practical experience requirement

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The importance of experience

ACCA’s Practical Experience Requirements are vital parts of the Certified Accounting Technician (CAT) and ACCA qualifications. They provide frameworks that support sustainable improvements in workplace performance and create more motivated and valuable employees.

As an employer of ACCA trainees, you play a vital role in ensuring trainees gain appropriate work experience and in supporting the relationship between trainees and their workplace mentors.

By supporting ACCA trainees in achieving the PER (Practical Experience Requirement standards), you are sending out a clear message that your organisation is committed to employees’ development.

Practical Experience Requirement - ACCA qualification

To achieve ACCA membership a trainee has to complete the ACCA exams, the Professional Ethics module and the PER, which includes:

completing three years’ employment in an accounting or finance-related role(s)

achieving 9 predefined performance objectives to the satisfaction of a practical experience supervisor(s)

recording and reporting their PER progress through an online system.

If you are an ACCA approved employer – trainee development stream at gold or platinum level, you may give permission to your trainees to be exempted from completing the 5 activities and narrative statements associated with each of our Performance Objectives.

This is at your discretion, as some employers prefer their trainees to have the discipline of completing the activities and narrative statements. The trainee will still be required to use the online PER recording tool, to notify us of their progress towards achieving 36 months in a relevant role.

To become a Certified Accounting Technician, a trainee must complete the CAT accountancy exams, the Foundations in Professionalism module and obtain at least one year’s supervised work experience.

Trainees who register for CAT from January 2011 onwards must complete Foundations in Practical Experience Requirements (FPER). Trainees who registered for CAT before the end of 2010 can submit a Trainee Training Record (TTR) instead up to and including the 31 December 2011, or they may choose to complete the new FPER. After that date, only the FPER will be accepted.